The Fantastic Market bows as Latin American genre production is building fast and genre talent is increasingly sought-after by U.S. companies.

The new initiative further consolidates both Rodriguez and Canana – which partners Participant Media in film fund Participant PanAmerica and IM Global in sales company Mundial – as lynchpin-players in Latin America’s fast evolving movie development landscape.

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On paper, the 16-project line-up reps an arresting mix of movies from key Spanish-speaking market producers and follow-ups from directors who have bowed to acclaim, international sales and in two cases, U.S. remakes, plus the added attraction of movies from first-time or far less-known helming values.

Hernandez will follow up 2009’s Elle Driver-sold “La casa muda” – the subject of an English-language remake from “Open Water” helmers Chris Kentis and Lara Lau, starring Elizabeth Olsen – with “Small Town.” In it, a man returns to his home-town to claim the coffin of his mother, who died at the hands of a sinister cult led by his father.

A project with an “Ocean’s 11” swagger and a large political canvas, “Wrong Place” –Bruges’ follow-up to Cuban zombie allegory “Juan of the Dead,” robustly sold by Latinofusion — turns on a master thief forced out of discreet retirement in Cuba as U.S.-Cuba business relations resume.

A potential next pic for Grau, whose Wild Bunch-sold cannibal family drama “Somos” was successfully remade by Jim Mickle in “We Are What We Are,” drug trade chamber piece “Yahama 300” has two mules facing off on an open water boat.

Turning on a maybe off-the-rails woman who confronts evil in a nearby forest, “The Elf,” from Jorge Navas (“Blood and Rain”) is set up at Diego Ramirez’s Colombia-based 64-A Films, which has just announced a five-horror-pic production alliance, The Madremonte Project, with L.A’s Jason Gurvitz, at Green Dog Films.